


Chicken Soup

by thompsonitis



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Sickfic, two nukes and a nuclear meltdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 03:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thompsonitis/pseuds/thompsonitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The blame falls squarely on Lalna for this one. (AKA philosophical conversations over tissues and soup.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chicken Soup

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted on my tumblr. Go to my tumblr if you're interested in seeing more of my work. (I usually post a work on Tumblr first.)
> 
> http://thompsonandco.tumblr.com/tagged/my-writing
> 
> Also The Adventures of Steve: badfic disguised as a popular book in Minecraftia. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Contrary to what everyone thinks, Lalna does take care of himself when he’s experimenting. It isn’t very productive of him not to. In fact, it’s pretty stupid seeing as how most of his experiments required a steady hand and focus. Being half-starved to death and running on fumes isn’t very conducive for running experiments that required such care and thought.

That doesn’t mean he cares for himself very well.

He’s prone to taking cat naps between experiments in odd places and waking up cold and with kinks in his back. He’s even more prone to eating junk food rather than something healthy and more filling.

It’s no surprise when he get the sniffles after doing some science on his day off.

Lalna doesn’t really think much of it. He just sneezes a lot and has to take to carrying some tissues with him at all times. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s gotten sick after experimenting, and he knows it will go away with a bit of time and medicine. Maybe faster if he sleeps in a bed and eats a hearty meal.

Simple enough.

\- X -

There’s a loud, hacking cough from the upper levels. It echoes through the factory, bouncing off marble walls and metal machines. Something drops to the ground, a loud thump, and Lalna almost places back a wire the wrong way.

“You alright up there, Xeph?” Honeydew calls from the bakery level. Lalna glances up from where he’s fiddling with the automatic farm in his lab, sniffing a bit. Xephos had been coughing and sneezing all morning, but this cough sounded the worse by far. He’s tempted to go check up on what Xephos is doing. How he’s doing as well.

“Not really,” Xephos answers weakly. His voice is breathier than it usually is, more subdued. It had that unmistakable quality of someone who had a stuffy nose. Lalna frowns, walking towards the access tube.

_Is Xephos in the penthouse or lower?_

Lalna brings a hand up to scratch his face, but he stops when he looks at his hands, making a face. There’s dirt under his fingernails, etched into the grooves of his hands. Lalna huffs; that’s what he gets for taking off his gloves.

There’s a loud racket in the bakery level a moment later, and Honeydew cusses loudly. “Hang on, Xephos, I’m coming up.” Lalna calls, shaking his head. He washes his hands at the sink that he installed near the entrance of his on-site lab, snatches up the black gloves that hang forlornly on the sink’s edge and pulls them back on. He sniffs again, feels in his pocket for a tissue and sneezes into it.

“Did you break something?” Xephos calls. It would sound threatening if he didn’t have a blocked nose and sound so tired.

“Look, it’s fine!” Honeydew yells back. 

Lalna chuckles, activating his flying ring to hover in the air, just above the lime green lights of the access tube. They’ve all taken to hovering in the air for a few moments before flying anywhere ever since the flying rings started to malfunction more often. Nearly dying a few times had pounded the habit into their heads.

Lalna sneezes, just as he’s about to go up. He ends losing control of where he’s going and narrowly misses the lights above. He spins off into the open space of the access tube, clutching his head with both hands.

“That was close,” Lalna mutters to himself, taking out another tissue when he sneezes again. He pockets the tissue, waving to Honeydew when the dwarf came out of the bakery.

“‘ello, Lalna,” Honeydew greets when he draws level with Lalna. Lalna mumbles back a greeting of his own.

They both fly up access tube, scanning the computer level for any sign of Xephos before moving up to look in the penthouse. They find Xephos sprawled out under one of the skylights, the one where the sunlight is unobstructed, an arm covering his eyes and breathing loudly through his mouth.

“Xephos?” Honeydew calls. “Oh Notch,” Honeydew says under his breath, dropping down to the floor and jogging to him. Lalna flies over behind Honeydew, landing heavily a few meters away from Xephos, then straightening up and pacing over with a frown.

Xephos groans unhappily. “What?” he grumbles out.

“You don’t look very well,” Lalna comments. Xephos huffs, then sneezes violently enough that his whole body curls up a bit before his limbs flop back to the floor. Lalna winces, taking another step closer to the prone man. Honeydew seems to have everything covered though. The dwarf is already lifting Xephos’ arm off his face and putting a hand on his forehead.

“You’re a bit warm,” Honeydew says. Xephos groans, eyes still closed.

“If anything, I feel cold, Honeydew.”

Lalna’s lips twist, “Oh dear,” he says, grabbing Xephos’ other arm when Honeydew motions for him to. Xephos huffs out a laugh and sits up, but Honeydew is still frowning, still has his eyebrows furrowed and a look in his eyes that Lalna hasn’t seen in a while. They get Xephos to stand, wobbly on his own two feet, and half carry him to the access tube.

Lalna sneezes.

“You’re both sick!” Honeydew exclaims, almost annoyed. Lalna shrugs, jostling Xephos accidentally. He sneezes again. 

Honeydew huffs, tugging Xephos away from Lalna. “Come on, Xeph, help me out a bit.” he tells Xephos as he tries to rearrange the man. Xephos looks at him with bleary eyes, but he moves without any further instructions so that Honeydew is giving Xephos a piggyback.

It looks odd, in all honesty. Honeydew is tall for a dwarf, but Xephos is still a full grown man of an average height. Xephos’ feet aren’t that far off from the ground.

“Just like old times,” Xephos comments with a weak laugh, adjusting his grip on Honeydew’s shoulders. Honeydew grins, for a moment, but it’s gone like quicksilver sand held in a strainer. 

Lalna’s hands reach out, but he stops before he touches either of them, tilts his head to the side. “Will you be alright carrying him?” he asks. 

Honeydew snorts, “‘Course, I’m a  _dwarf_.” he replies, stepping up to the access tube. Honeydew turns to him, giving him a dirty look, disapproval obvious even through his thick beard. “The problem here, right, is that both of you are sick. There’s no point in working today.” 

Lalna gives him a guilty shrug. He can’t do much else.

Honeydew shakes his head, turning forwards again.

“Follow me,” Honeydew says, and Lalna follows him down to the ground floor, sniffing all the while. Xephos is strangely quiet during the trip to the dormitories, sniffing mostly, but his eyes track everything that moves disinterestedly, like he doesn’t care about what’s in front of him.  _Probably too tired to_ , Lalna thinks.

Lalna opens the door for them and helps Honeydew put Xephos down. “Thanks, friend,” Xephos mumbles, straightening up. Xephos rubs at his face before shuffling over to the chest by his bed. He takes out a few things and then walks into the bathroom that they had built ages ago, firmly shutting the door after him. 

Lalna sighs, flopping down to sit at the foot of his bed. Honeydew stays standing, scratching at his beard with one hand and the other on his hip. His face is thoughtful, but he doesn’t say anything so Lalna doesn’t either.

“Lalna,” Honeydew says after a minute. “Do you have something for it? Medicine? A potion?”

Lalna blinks, leaning back on his hands. “For colds?” Lalna says, even though he doesn’t need to. It was just one of those he did to let his mind catch up to his mouth, like when he fiddled with the settings of his laser. “Uh, yeah. I’ve got some medicine back at my castle.” 

Lalna stands up again, “I could get it-”

“Nah,” Honeydew interrupts. “I’ll get it. You just rest up here.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Lalna blinks, sitting back down. These two- they still surprised him, sometimes.

“Well. It’s in one of chests in the sorting room. Just. Yeah.” Lalna says, rubbing the back of his head. Honeydew nods, already moving towards the door.

“Alright then.” he says, opening the door. He turns to look at Lalna again, eyes serious but lips quirked up in his usual lopsided smile. “You rest up. We’ll- I’ll go get the medicine for the both of you.” 

Lalna smiles back, ignores the mistake with more grace than he would usually give. “Thanks,” he repeats, and waves as Honeydew leaves, shutting the door behind him. He flops back onto the bed, kicking off his boots with a sigh. He sneezes again.

The door to the bathroom opens a few moments later. Lalna turns his head to look at Xephos upside down, takes in the stretched and faded long sleeved shirt that Xephos had changed into, and his eyebrow starts to climb up his forehead. Lalna turns over to lay on his stomach, pillowing his head with his arms and his lab coat twisting around him. He frowns.

Lalna’s eyes drift up to Xephos’ face. His nose is red, his cheeks flushed and his eyes the slightest bit watery. Lalna would feel bad about getting Xephos sick, but he isn’t certain if it was him that had spread the cold. He had only met Xephos while sick this morning, and colds needed a few days to incubate.

… Unless Xephos’ biology had something to do with. Lalna didn’t really believe that Xephos is an alien. Maybe Xephos just had a different genetic makeup than normal?

“Where’s Honeydew gone?” Xephos asks, coming closer.

This close, Lalna can see how many alterations had been made to it. In some places there are patches of a red that’s close to the colour of the original material, but not quite. In others, he can make out shoddy repairs on tears in the material, and in others the work of a seamstress. The sleeves and the black collar are frayed and it’s thin in some places, but it looks comfortable enough.

“Uh- out,” Lalna says, watching as Xephos shoves his clothes, bundled together into a ball, into his chest haphazardly. “He went to get some medicine for our colds from my castle.” Xephos pauses where he’s propping his sapphire sword up by his bed, curiosity flickering into something unreadable then to worry.

“Did you tell him where it is, exactly?”

Lalna raises an eyebrow. “No?” he says, like it’s a question. Xephos’ lips twist into an unsettled frown, his hands fiddling with his sword harness. Lalna reaches to Xephos, making grabby hands. Xephos laughs, shaking his head, but he hands Lalna his harness anyway. Lalna holds it close to his face, feeling the leather between his fingers.

“Lalna, you didn’t remodel after I came over to help with the Christmas stuff, did you?” Xephos asks. Lalna shakes his head, then turns over onto his back to hold up the sword harness to inspect it.

He hears Xephos breath out heavily, hears the covers rustle and a sniff, a miserable grumble. “Honeydew’s going to take a while then,” Xephos says. Lalna tilts his head back to look at Xephos, cocooned in his bed sheets. “You’ve got a shitload of chests,” Xephos says, blunt and expression flat. Lalna blinks, then grins sheepishly.

“Oops.”

Xephos’ lips quirk up, and he laughs.

\- X -

There are tissues everywhere. Lalna had taken off his goggles, coat and belt ages ago. He had wrapped himself in his bed covers, and started flipping through a copy of  _The Adventures of Steve_. Xephos had fallen into a fitful sleep some time ago, leaving Lalna mostly free reign of the dormitory.

It’s been only forty minutes since Honeydew left.

Lying on his stomach, Lalna kicks his legs about, letting the sound of his pants swishing periodically fill the quiet of the room. Bored, he flips to the next page of the book with one hand, the other being used to prop his head up. He’s nearly finished the book.

The book isn’t quite as interesting as people made it out to be.

_Steve looked down at Rita, eyes dark. “Why,” he asked, “would you jump in front of that creeper?” Rita coughed in his arms, a small, sad smile pulling at her bloodied lips._

_“I- it’s not- Rita, I can respawn too! You can’t just- why did you-?” he sobbed. Steve pulled her closer, carefully cradling her body._

_“B-because,” she breathed out. “I-” she coughed again, turning her head to the side to spit out a glob of blood. “I’m selfish.”_

_She breathed in one last time and smiled brilliantly at Steve. “I’ll catch up to you, so go- go and rescue Daisy.”_

_Steve gritted his teeth-_

“What’re you reading?”

Lalna looks up to the bed on his right. Xephos’ head is poking out from the pile of blankets that he had taken for himself. He’s looking a bit better than he was this morning, but he still looks paler than usual, his nose a tint of red. It’s just that the exhaustion has been replaced by a sleepy look, amplified by his almost impossibly slow blinks.

“ _The Adventures of Steve_.” Lalna answers, reciting the title with a grandness that made Xephos chuckle. He puts the book down and crosses his arms to use them as a pillow, facing Xephos.

Xephos hums, but then coughs. “I read that,” he says after he’s done coughing. “What are you up to?”

“The part where Rita dies.” Lalna says, then he snorts, shooting a look at the book before turning back to Xephos. “I don’t get why Steve’s making such a fuss about it.” Xephos shuffles a bit, his head disappearing underneath his covers for a moment before reappearing again.

“What do you mean?” he asks, voice tired. His mouth moves to shape the words carefully, like he knows what he’s trying to say, but isn’t quite sure if he’s getting the wording right. “Rita’s dying. People are usually sad when their friends  _die_.”

Lalna waves a hand, “Yeah, but Rita is just going to respawn again.”

“But- she died.”

“So?” Lalna asks, turning onto his side to face Xephos properly. “She still respawns.”

Xephos looks at him, thoughtful and dissatisfied. “I don’t think you know exactly what dying means to most people.”

“Then what does it mean to most people?” Lalna asks him, irritated.

“It’s,” Xephos pauses for a moment. “Imagine if Honeydew and I died, right-”

Should he, Lalna thinks for a moment, be irritated that it’s always Honeydew and Xephos?

At this point, Lalna only feels resignation. Resignation that their names are never separate, never apart, much like a semi-colon. Like there will never be enough space for a third, never enough space for another. Petty of him, really, but everyone but him seemed to have a partner in crime.

“- and that was it. We didn’t respawn- just our corpses rotting in the ground.”

Lalna is silent as he tries to imagine it. He can’t, really. He had always thought that if they were ever to part ways, Xephos and Honeydew would travel back to the mainland, leaving Lalna to Tekkitopia. He can’t imagine burying a friend. Never has, actually.

He’s heard about the practice in mainland, though. Very few people had the ability to respawn there, so the practice has been done for ages. Lalna had always wanted to find out why only some people could respawn, but he’s always distracted by more pressing matters that he couldn’t just leave alone.

Xephos continues after a few moments of quiet. “I don’t know what Tekkitopia is like, but in Minecraftia death is… final.” Xephos says. He sneezes, reaching for a another tissue to wipe off the snot. “Even with the respawn, most people believe that you lose a part of yourself whenever you die. Doesn’t help that most people romanticize the whole thing.”

Lalna shifts, looking away for a moment to kick his covers around a bit so that it covered his feet again. “How so?” Lalna asks, raising an eyebrow. He sniffs, shifting closer to the edge of his mattress, closer to Xephos.

Xephos grins, “In most stories where the characters can respawn, they gloss over how painful death is and don’t even mention how much it hurts to respawn to focus on other things. Like when Rita dies.”

Lalna laughs, throwing his pillow at Xephos. Xephos catches it, throwing it back at Lalna. “Lomadia gave it to me okay,” Lalna says. He picks up the open book and puts it on top of the chest next to his bed, then turns back to Xephos, hugging the same pillow they had just thrown around.

Xephos smiles, snuggling into his covers and closing his eyes.

“No one really gets how respawning works- I mean, for most people the memories of dying and respawning are pretty fuzzy, right? But occasionally some people remember what happened.” Lalna stills, not saying a word. Xephos doesn’t seem to notice how quiet he is. “Remembering how you died is pretty traumatic.”

Lalna bites his lips, thinking of angry purple eyes behind blue and red, thinks of angry, stilted conversations. “Can’t I just say sorry?” he murmurs, sullen. Xephos catches it, sniffing a bit as he shifts again.

“Say sorry about what?” Xephos asks. Lalna looks away from Xephos for a moment, but looks Xephos in the eye when he answers.

“Before I met you and Honeydew, there was a- a war between me and Sjin.” Lalna explains. He takes a deep breath, then another. “It got pretty destructive.” Lalna fidgets, eyes flickering around the room. They rest for a moment on the sword harness, hanging on the foot of Xephos’ bed, then to the floor, where in his lab coat his mining laser sat, turned off, in one of the pockets, then to  _The Adventures of Steve_ , then back to Xephos.

“Lalna,” he says slowly, “how destructive?”

Lalna swallows. “Two nukes and a nuclear meltdown. That was after we killed just about everyone, though.” he blurts out, before he can think better of it, before terror can squeeze out the air in his lungs and the words get stuck in his throat.

“What?!” Xephos shouts. “Two nukes and a-” Xephos dissolves into hacking coughs. He coughs hard enough that Lalna finds himself scrambling out of his bed to kneel by Xephos’. He rips off the covers and helps Xephos sit up, rubbing Xephos’ back and feeling useless as he watches his friend continue coughing.

“You-” Xephos breathes out when his coughs die down, massaging his throat. “Really?”

“Drink this,” Lalna says instead, taking the cup of water from the top of Xephos’ chest and holding it up. Xephos nods, takes the cup and sips from it.

“Really?” Xephos repeats weakly. Lalna nods, busying himself with taking the cup from Xephos’ hand and putting it down. Lalna can feel Xephos staring at him, but when he looks at Xephos doesn’t look angry, per say. More disappointed than anything.

Lalna pushes Xephos so that he’s sitting with his back against the headboard, and tucks the covers back around him. Silently, he goes back into his own bed, feeling guilt churn in his stomach.

“Lalna.” Xephos breaks the silence. “You should apologise.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Lalna snaps, spinning to pin Xephos down with a glare, the one that made people like Sjin and Rythian flinch. Xephos doesn’t do anything but stare Lalna straight in the eye, a solid presence that refused to budge. One moment, then another passes before Lalna’s eyes soften, “Sorry.” Lalna says, gentler. He sits down heavily on the foot of his bed, rubbing at his face.

Xephos looks guilty for a moment, uncomfortable as he fiddled with this his sleeve. “I don’t know what else to tell you, Lalna.” he says softly. Lalna shrugs, then flops back onto his bed to stare blankly at the roof.

“Yeah.”

\- X -

It’s maybe another hour before anything else happens. Honeydew comes back triumphantly, voice loud and constantly moving, like a hurricane, though maybe not as destructive.

At least he’s got the medicine; five bottles of it, in fact.

Lalna makes sure that Xephos eats before he takes the medicine. Has to enlist Honeydew into helping him make lunch, which ends up taking long enough that Xephos swoops in and sets them tasks to do instead of bumbling about.

Eventually, they get a lunch consisting entirely of bread and chicken soup. Everyone complains about the way it was made but no one really cares. When they finally drown a bottle of the medicine each the sun is almost setting, already starting to sink into the horizon.

The medicine has a strange effect on Xephos. The man is dead asleep, five minutes after taking it.

Honeydew is entertained by Xephos’ apparently non-existent resistance to drugs, poking at the man and pulling his cheeks, giggling like a child. Lalna watches from his bed, wrapped up and pleasantly warm, amused at his friend’s antics. He feels sleepy, struggles to stay awake for no real reason.

"Look at him, sleeping like a babby." Lalna snorts, still keeping an eye on the two.

Honeydew gets bored, takes to wandering around the dormitory and ignoring the mess. Eventually he finds something to read.

“Hey,” Lalna says, then yawns. Honeydew looks up from his spot by Xephos’ feet, putting down  _The Adventures of Steve._  “What do you think respawning is?”

“What?” Honeydew says. He scratches his chin, face thoughtful. “What brought this on?”

“I was talking with Xephos earlier- Minecraftia is a lot different from Tekkitopia, and I got curious.” Lalna explains. He hums for a moment, thinking. “He told me that Minecraftians think of death as a more final thing, right, so how does that work with respawning?”

Honeydew crosses his arms, silent for a moment. “Rebirth.” he says, and Lalna prompts him with a small noise, too sleepy to do much else. “A man called Braeburn once told us that respawning is a lot like rebirth. You die, but then you live again, as defenseless and new as a baby.”

There’s a pause. “I dunno. I guess it just stuck.”

Lalna hums, snuggling into his pillow. “New beginnings, huh,” he mumbles into the cloth, and doesn’t reply when Honeydew asks about what he said.


End file.
